Cigarette Smoking and Nephrolitiasis in Adult Individuals

Background: nephrolithiasis is a widespread multifactorial disorder. constitutional, environmental and genetic factors play a role in stone formation. although important advances have been made in understanding the pathophysiology of stone formation, none of the many theories have given a satisfactory explanation of this process. objectives: the objective of study was to evaluate the probable relationship between cigarette smoking and nephrolitiasis in adult men. patients and methods: a total of 102 cases diagnosed with nepholithiasis and 121 age-matched healthy controls were recruited from june 2010 to september 2011. smoking status and resultant data was obtained from both groups. results: twenty seven (26.5%) of the patients with stones and eighteen (14.9%) of the control group were current cigarette smokers. our findings showed that smoking significantly increases the risk of nepholithiasis (or = 2.06, 95% ci: 1.06-4.01, p = 0.034). there was no significant difference in the number of cigarettes smoked (p = 0.830) and years of smoking (p = 0.536) between subjects with and without stones (p = 0.536). conclusions: this study suggests that cigarette smoking might be an independent risk factor for the development of nephrolithiasis.